


A Million Days

by likingandloving



Series: Our Thoughts [1]
Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: Canon Era, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 01:52:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5439089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likingandloving/pseuds/likingandloving
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wishes he could have a million more days with her.</p><p>But this was Leslie’s dream.</p><p>And he would rather let her have her dreams than a billion more days with him.</p><p>[An in-depth look into Ben's mind during 'The Trial of Leslie Knope']</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Million Days

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! I've decided to start a series of one-shots that are like in-depth looks at the minds of either Leslie, Ben, April, Andy or whichever character during episodes of Parks and Rec. I hope you enjoy!

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Leslie was running.

The all women’s yacht club with a tight guy in a suit ruffling through a clipboard did tip him off a little bit more, but it was Leslie’s behavior the night before that caused all the pieces to click together.

“Hey, you okay?” He asked, noticing the way that Leslie’s fingers wrung nervously together as she stared at the binder in her lap, her adorable feet that were wrapped in waffle-designed socks tapping in an off-rhythm against the cushion of her couch.

“Oh me? Yeah, yeah, I’m totally fine. _Totally_ fine.” She blew out a nervous breath, running her fingers again over her almost indecipherable words. She mutters quietly to herself before shaking her head and crossing out her words before beginning to jot down new ones. Leslie had been on the edge the entire night. Her eyes would always glance up at him nervously like she was expecting something to happen to him that she didn’t want to happen. Like how just as he was preparing dinner, she spent almost two whole minutes just staring at him intently while he grated cheese that Ben had almost asked if she wanted something, but when he caught her eye she quickly ducked down and blushed and tried to stir the flour in the bag.

“Are you sure?” He presses again, settling on the couch next to her and lifting her feet in his lap.

“Yeah, I’m sure. I’m fine. See?” She crosses her eyes awkwardly, as if it would prove to Ben that she was being tense and weird for no reason. He sighs, because clearly something was bothering her, but he wasn’t going to push her to tell him if she wasn’t ready.

Because he knew that she would tell him if she was ready.

Instead, he kneads his thumbs into the arches of her feet because she’s been so tense the past week and he would do anything to make her feel even a little better.

She sighs contentedly, momentarily forgetting whatever she was writing in her binder to tilt her head back and lets herself just absorb the movement of Ben’s fingers soothing the knots in her muscles.

“That better?”

She nods before lifting her head up and smiling at him. There’s something in her eyes, something that he’s never seen before, dancing around in her blue skies.

“Why do you have to be so amazing?”

The question would usually be flirty, accompanied by the slight curl of her lips and a teasing tone filtering in her voice while her hand squeezed his hand (sometimes his butt) suggestively. But instead, the question was tinted in desperation, a vague sense of finality threaded through its words.

Ben doesn’t know what it means, why it feels like Leslie was looking for a reason for him to say that he wasn’t amazing at all.

“Do you not want me to be?”

The question clearly throws her off, confusion clear in her expression. She reaches for his stalled hands resting on her ankles and threads their fingers together, squeezing his hands reassuringly (despite the fact that he didn’t feel reassured at all by her touch right now).

“Of course not. You’re just so amazing that sometimes I can’t believe you’re mine.”

The silent and unspoken words shine through her sentence, already itching to be let out but she stays silent. Ben chooses to ignore them, choosing instead to smile back with a tenderness he could only reserve for her.

“You know what, enough work for tonight.” He reaches for her binder despite her weak protests, shutting it before placing it on her coffee table besides the rest of her binders and books on indoor planting.

“I think I know what will make you feel better.”

He draws her a warm bath, complete with lavender bath salts and baked good scented candles, and makes her hot chocolate with tons of whipped cream and when she’s done he kneads the knots out of her shoulders with lotion and watches her eyes droop sleepily.

Ben knows that she hasn’t been getting much sleep lately, based on the many times he’s awoken the past few days to rustling papers and nervous mumblings and a mess of glue, scissors and colored paper in bed next to him. He continues to press and rub at her shoulders until he feels her start to relax, the tension slowly seeping out of her muscles.

“Honey, you’ve been so tired lately. Why don’t you head to bed early just for tonight?” He suggests, but of course, Leslie starts shaking her head immediately because she is Leslie Knope and government work is what she lives _and_ breathes. Sometimes, Ben thinks, she forgets that she's not just a government machine and is also a human who was needs other than color-coding binders and making plans to improve parks. She tries to pull away from his grip but he keeps it strong and kisses the back of her head.

“But---“

“Work will be there for you in the morning. Just go to sleep okay?” He brushes his lips against the exposed skin of her shoulders and murmurs how much she should sleep against the crook of her neck. Her resolve diminishes slowly, the wall beginning to chip away every time his lips skim her freckled skin. 

Eventually, after a few more carefully placed kisses and rubbing at her waist reassuringly, she nods. She’s out before she even hits her pillow and it makes Ben smile that he got Leslie Knope, someone who had endless to do lists and extensive agendas and who was seemingly powered by an endless amount of sugar and optimism, to sleep before 11 pm.

He gets back to his own work that’s waiting for him, reviewing his spreadsheets and some policies that were waiting for his approval. He’s halfway through with reviewing the budget for Public Works and briefly wondering why they got an unlimited supply of Sweetums soda when Leslie’s nightly campaign rambles began to kick in.

“I have grown with Pawnee and Pawnee will always be a part of me. You guys are my family, these streets are my home. As your future—“ She trails off incoherently, shifting in her sleep.

It seemed like it was local government that Leslie was dreaming about now. The position she would run for would usually vary, depending on whatever issue got her riled up that day.

(Ben doesn’t even want to talk about that time she and Ron argued about the efficiency of their federal government. She had sworn in her sleep that when she was president she’d remove all Food and Stuffs from a fifty-mile radius of Ron Swanson and replace them all with Whole Foods and all of the Paunch Burgers with vegan restaurants.)

But when she sleepily mumbles about Pawnee’s education systems, he starts to notice that there was a consistency in all of her speeches.

On Tuesday, it was a speech about the senior’s healthcare and how they lacked accessibility in Pawnee.

On Wednesday, he was woken up at around 4 am by her strong position on the Pawnee Policemen’s pensions and benefits.

On Thursday, he received a sharp kick to the shin that shocked him out of his Star Trek dream where he was in the Enterprise’s control room before registering that Leslie was passionately debating about Pawnee’s health codes.

In all her speeches it’s been all consistently about Pawnee, which has never happened before. Usually it was Governor speeches the first two days of the week, before shifting to either Senator or local government and maybe House of Representatives if she was feeling frisky, then it being meeting Joe Biden or becoming president.

(He tries not to let it bother him that she dreams of Joe Biden so often but honestly, the phrase ‘Hello Mr. Vice President’ is never going to be the same in his mind ever again.)

“And I promise that we will reduce obesity in Pawnee—“

There it was again.

 _Pawnee_.

He sighs.

It now makes sense, why she was so tense lately, why she’s always looked at him like he was going to disappear at any moment and why she’s been so giddy at the same time.

He remembers how happy Leslie was after Lil Sebastian’s Memorial service, despite being so torn up about his death the day before. The way that when they got home she tugged him straight to the bedroom and the sex was just... mind-blowing (and that was an understatement). It was like something else was driving her, the happiness practically bouncing off of her in bright rays as they rocked the bed and Ben had tried to remember the name of all of Picard’s crew just to last a little longer because oh God, she had been _so_ energetic and warm and tight and it was like her happiness was slowly transferring itself to him. He remembers feeling so happy and refreshed the next day and not just because of the sex, but because _she_ was so happy.

That should have been his first warning sign.

She starts rambling about things they should do to improve the recreation center and there was no doubt in Ben's mind now. 

She was going to run for local government.

He knows that he should be happy, should be ecstatic because if there's one thing he knows about Leslie is that she was practically born to run for office. But he knows that running for office meant that her reputation had to be stellar, appealing to the voters and he knew that sleeping with your boss wasn't exactly the best image. It would be a major scandal if anyone found out and her chances at winning would be shot before she even had a chance to really show the public what she could do for them. 

They would have to break up to save her campaign.

He spends the rest of the night sleepless, trying not to let it rule his thoughts. Ben shifted and fidgeted the entire night, half listening to Leslie promise everything she could to the people of Pawnee and half mulling over whether or not he should tell her that he knows she’s running for government. Eventually, he falls asleep at around 4:30 to her promises of lowered taxes for small local businesses.

He tries not to let it bother him the next morning. He wakes up at around 6 and Leslie’s not next to him anymore, but he can hear the shower running. She’s softly humming to herself when she exits the bathroom, hair falling down her shoulders in wet tendrils and wrapped in nothing but a towel.

She smiles when she sees him, padding over to his side of the bed and pressing a quick kiss to his lips.

“Morning, babe.”

He murmurs his own greeting, reaching up for another kiss before she hums contentedly.

“Thank you for last night, by the way. I really needed that. You are the best boyfriend ever.” She kisses his forehead and continues humming as she gets dressed and until now, Ben still isn’t used to the domesticity of it all.

He wishes it would stay like this forever, with Leslie by his side, making campaign speeches in his sleep and humming in the quiet light of day.

He wishes he could have a million more days with her.

“Hey, why don’t you go ahead to work and I’ll follow? It might get a little conspicuous if we show up at the same time _again_.”

“Oh, yeah. Of course.” She looks upset at being reminded of the fact that no one knows about this but them, but she nods anyways. She gets dressed and grabs her bag before telling him that she’ll see him at work.

The next few days, he tries not to think about it, tries not to let it eat away in his mind. They still go out on dates and make out and send secret texts during meetings and spend the night together, but with every passing day it feels more and more like they were getting ready to say goodbye and he eventually realizes that he can’t be selfish.

One night, after he kisses her goodbye at her front door, he grabs his phone and tries to look for the contact that Leslie gave him for the buttons he made for the Harvest Festival because she needs to know that he’s going to support her through this no matter what, even when they eventually break up.

She needs to know that he’s not going to hate her because he knows that’s what she’s going to think.

He wishes he could have a million more days with her.

But this was Leslie’s dream.

And he would rather let her have her dreams than a billion more days with him.

\---

He buys her the éclair because he knows that she hasn’t had breakfast and she needs her sugar. When he goes inside Doug’s Donuts he buys her the éclair in an L-shape because he wants to make her smile and what makes her smile more than a chocolate pastry that’s dedicated to her?

He’s talking to Henry when she bolts into the room, suddenly demanding that she needs to talk to him while Henry’s telling him the weight and height of his little niece and he’s a little shocked that she just hangs up the phone for him but the look in her eyes tells him that he could just call Henry back later.

She comes first.

But first, he gives her the éclair because it looks like she could use a smile right about now.

It gives him the completely opposite result.

She smiles, clearly touched by the gesture but breaks down into tears in the next second.

“Woah, I’m sorry, did you not want the éclair…?” He asks her, trepidation in his voice but instead she just kisses him with everything that she has and it makes his knees shake.

He has the to common sense to tell her that they probably shouldn’t do this in City Hall, where they would probably get caught, but she tugs on his jacket and tells him that they should just go to her house and he doesn’t question it.

They spend the night together and when he wakes up she’s making breakfast and they kiss slowly over chocolate chip pancakes and whipped cream. He watches her get dressed and wiggle suggestively for him and if they weren’t going to be late for work they’d probably repeat last nights events.

Instead, she kisses him goodbye with a frazzled expression and goes to work because only she would insist on being in City Hall two hours before it officially opened.

He goes to pick up the button from Leslie’s button guy because as much as he hates it, reality is going to catch up to them sooner or later.

\---

His palms sweat as he thinks of the box in his pocket as he pulls into the parking lot of some French or maybe Italian restaurant he picked for their weekly date tonight in Bloomington, but honestly, he can’t remember which he picked because he knows that this is probably it, this is the night where it all ends.

Leslie sighs again for the umpteenth time, nervously glancing out the window before telling him again that she was going to be honest and telling him that his windows were horribly dirty and he should probably get a car wash.

He leads her into the restaurant, the box suddenly feeling like its made of lead in his suit jacket.

He wants to laugh when she tells the waitress that she’s going to be honest and direct and orders a cheap glass of wine because she can’t tell the difference and he knows this probably won’t last long, so he orders the same. When she starts speaking, part of him wants to reach one and hold her hand because she looks so nervous and she doesn’t have to be.

He’s not going to hate her, no matter what she thinks.

Ben tells her that he knows what she’s going to say and his heart starts to beat a little louder because the end draws near, the finish line practically drawing itself in the sand and he doesn’t want to do this but there was an overwhelming sense of duty, to her and to Pawnee. He pulls the box from his pocket and slides it over to her.

“I got you something.”

“No, what is this?” Leslie looks extremely torn, but despite his reassurances that no, it wasn’t jewelry and she should just open it, she stands up and rambles on about needing to use the bathroom and not splitting and he knows that she’s gonna split.

She goes out the front door and he sees her call a cab from the window and he sighs, calling the waitress to pay for the check because he’s not really hungry. He’s left staring at the box, the end of their relationship heavy in his hands.

He doesn’t see her for the rest of the night; instead he spends his night watching re-runs of a documentary he’s already watched on the History Channel and wishes that if this was one of the last days he would have with her, that she was here.

But she’s not, and that’s something he’ll just have to get used to.

(He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to it, not when he’s already had a taste of a life with her.)

\---

He gets a text from Leslie the next morning, asking him to meet her in his office and he knows that this is it. He steels himself, straightening out his tie and jacket like it would give him some extra strength. Before he goes into his office, he opens the box and stares at the blue, red, and white that stands behind her name and realizes that they aren’t the only ones that are going to stand behind her. She had the entire Parks department and Ann and Chris and him. 

He’ll always be behind her.

“I know I’ve been acting really weird lately and um, I really like you and what I’m about to say will contradict the idea that I really like you but---“

He knows. He knows all of it. He doesn’t need her to say it for him to know.

“I know.” He simply says, before sliding the box to her again. “So just open the box.”

“Please stop bringing out the box, okay?” He knows that she just doesn’t want it to be harder for her to end this but she needs to know.

“Leslie—“

He briefly thinks that maybe he won’t miss her stubbornness.

(But if he was being honest, he’ll miss it. He’ll miss all of it. He would let her be stubborn for the rest of their lives if he could just have _her_.)

“Okay, I’ll just open the box for you.”

The look she gets on her face is the same look he got when he first got the button from the shop. He had brushed his fingers against the laminated surface and knew that this was it. This would be the end, no matter how much he didn’t want it to be. There were tears the pooled in the corners of her eyes, glancing up at him.

“You knew?” Her voice is cracked, words caught on a broken edge.

“I figured it out a while ago. I’m sorry. I should have told you I knew but I just- I wanted this to last as long as possible.”

There were so many chances, so many opportunities that he could have told her, where they were just lounging around in her living room or sitting on opposite ends of the couch or talking on the phone before going to sleep, but he just couldn’t. He couldn’t let it end, not when he just wanted one more day with her.

He would always want just one more day with her.

He knew he was being selfish, that he was the one who didn’t want his heart to break so he just drew it out as long as he could, thinking that it didn’t have to end.

But they both knew that it had to.

“Why do we have to breakup?”

Because she’s too special, too amazing, too hardworking to let him stand in the way of her dreams. Everything she’s ever wanted was within her reach and he was just an obstacle preventing her from grabbing everything she's ever deserved with eager hands.

Instead, he tells her that he doesn’t want anyone thinking that she got anywhere because she was sleeping with her boss.

“But I really like sleeping with my boss.”

He feels his own lips quirk because she’s not the only one, but he knows there won’t be anything to like anymore after this and his smile slowly fades.

“Okay, look, I’m going to make this really easy for you.”

That’s all he’s tried to do these past few days, just make things easier for her because the Lord knows she deserves this. Every single part of this, her running for government and her winning, it’s all that matters now. He doesn’t. He _shouldn’t_.

He starts spewing out every break-up line he knows from any cheesy romantic comedy where the jerk breaks up with the leading lady because he doesn’t see how great she is and probably because she deserves better. He hopes that he’s not the jerk in this movie because he would rather be the handsome lead actor who gets to kiss her and tell her how special she is and live out their happily ever after, but he does believe that she deserves better.

Better than sneaking around with a line of impending punishments and consequences hanging over their heads.

The silence weighs heavily on them, Ben glancing down at his hands because he’s scared that if he looks at her he’ll take all of it back, that he’d willingly risk her campaign just for a shot at making it work between them. Eventually, he lifts his eyes back up to hers because who knew when the next time they’d be this close would be and he needs to memorize her face, every slope of her cheekbones and the lines in the corners of her mouth that are more prominent when she smiles and the passion that burns like fire in her eyes.

“How did you figure it out?”

“Leslie, there was a dude in the ladies’ yacht club.”

“Yeah, but I covered that pretty well.”

He doesn’t have the heart to say that she really didn’t.

“Also, you’ve been making campaign speeches in your sleep. Granted, you always do that, but then they got really… specific and moving.”

“Did I have a good opening line?”

_“I have grown with Pawnee and Pawnee will always be a part of me. You guys are my family, these streets are my home.”_

He thinks about her, her blonde hair spread against white sheets and the indent of her naked back curved to fit the mattress and the sun creating shadows against her curves. Crumpled sheets hanging low on her hips as she started to mumble sleepily about what she could give to Pawnee and he would just listen and trace letters along her spine and know that she’d make a great candidate. He knows that she could give a lot to Pawnee, more than any candidate, more than any person in Pawnee ever could.

He thinks about her opening line, about growing with Pawnee and how Pawnee was always a part of her. And about how she was Pawnee to him. How she was as important to him as Pawnee was to her.

And why it was important that he didn’t get in the way of this.

“It was simple, but I liked it.”

And later on, when pride and happiness swells in his chest as he’s watching her announce her candidacy, he can’t help but think that this is what was meant to be.

Even if they weren’t.

\---


End file.
